Tax Season!

[Shyster]

I was able to track down the appropriate place to e-file my local taxes. Turns out there are two collectors for Allegheny County, and I was trying to use the wrong one. I'm covered by Keystone Collections Group. With that done, all my tax returns are done and in.

[meow]

This is my first year with a kid...how does that change my expected return?

Please say double it.

[ulf]

You'll get a few hundred more dollars back if everything else is consistent

[ulf]

Well actually probably more. You get an extra exemption, I was just thinking of the child credit

[meow]

We have $0 in child care cost, does that make a difference?

[Malkamaniac]

Does anyone even get a return anymore? I haven't seen a return since the year after we bought our house. Married and no kids kind of sucks in that regard. We always break even or end up owing $100 or so.

[mac5155]

Cant you pay a "babysitter" "cash"?

[meow]

Does anyone even get a return anymore? I haven't seen a return since the year after we bought our house. Married and no kids kind of sucks in that regard. We always break even or end up owing $100 or so.

We get a huge return each year.

[meow]

Cant you pay a "babysitter" "cash"?

My wife owns and operates a daycare, so mini meow goes fo free

[skullman80]

We still get quite a bit even after getting married. I know it's just an interest free loan to the gov't but I like getting a chunk back around this time of the year. Capping off the student loan interest deduction at 2500$ bit us a bit this year though.

[mac5155]

well that seems to be even easier to "handle"

[Malkamaniac]

Does anyone even get a return anymore? I haven't seen a return since the year after we bought our house. Married and no kids kind of sucks in that regard. We always break even or end up owing $100 or so.

We get a huge return each year.

I don't understand what we're doing wrong then lol. We got a huge return after we bought our house, since then? Not so much. Are you filing them with someone like H&R Block or doing them yourself?


We've done them ourselves so I'm wondering if we're missing something.

[mac5155]

Really you're probably not doing anything wrong. We get a return because of 2 things:

1.) our bonuses are taxed at the highest rate
2.) we are able to deduct $2500 of student loan interest
3.) (in years past) we had large tuition deductions. Not so much anymore.

[skullman80]

Yeah my wife's large tuition deductions when she was getting her masters helped, along with the student loan interest. Me contributing to my HSA at work also brought my taxable income down quite a bit which helped overall.

[mac5155]

both of our w4s are set at 1.

Do you itemize or not? Deduct everything you can? There's a ton of stuff you can deduct, but it only makes sense if you have more than the standard deduction amount. There are then other things that lower your taxable income, like student loan interest, mortgage interest, etc.

[meow]

Does anyone even get a return anymore? I haven't seen a return since the year after we bought our house. Married and no kids kind of sucks in that regard. We always break even or end up owing $100 or so.

We get a huge return each year.

I don't understand what we're doing wrong then lol. We got a huge return after we bought our house, since then? Not so much. Are you filing them with someone like H&R Block or doing them yourself?


We've done them ourselves so I'm wondering if we're missing something.

We have an accountant. I'm not trying to fill my taxes by myself. It just seems like a massive headache that I don't really want to deal with. I do know that my W-4 has a bunch of 0's and one 1.

[Malkamaniac]

both of our w4s are set at 1.

Do you itemize or not? Deduct everything you can? There's a ton of stuff you can deduct, but it only makes sense if you have more than the standard deduction amount. There are then other things that lower your taxable income, like student loan interest, mortgage interest, etc.

Ours are set at zero. They're zero because I understood it as the government then witholding the most money.

[skullman80]

I always do our taxes. We have stuff like mortgage interest, student loan interest, educator stuff cause my wife is a teacher, we had some energy credits this year cause of new windows/doors we installed, but all pretty simple. We almost always do standard deduction cause even when I go through and itemize the standard deduction makes more sense.

Both of our allowances are set to 0 and we file married jointly or whatever.

Usually either use tax act or HR Block online for the federal, then file the stated through the state website.

[Malkamaniac]

Yea that's what we do, skullman. We use HR Block's tax program.

[mac5155]

both of our w4s are set at 1.

Do you itemize or not? Deduct everything you can? There's a ton of stuff you can deduct, but it only makes sense if you have more than the standard deduction amount. There are then other things that lower your taxable income, like student loan interest, mortgage interest, etc.

Ours are set at zero. They're zero because I understood it as the government then witholding the most money.

yea, so if it's set at 0 and you're not getting any refund, something's up I would think.

[PensFanInDC]

We already filed but I just received a statement with over $1200 in charitable donations on it. How much would this affect my refund and would it be worth it to amend my return?

[mac5155]

Did you itemize or not?

[PensFanInDC]

I didn't put it in with my return at all.

[PensFanInDC]

And it's easy to itemize. These are cash (checks) donations to a charitable organization.

[dodint]

He's asking if you used the Standard Deduction or did you itemize.

If you itemized, it has an impact. If you used the SD, it might have an impact if you're close enough to the SD. But if you used the SD chances are the difference is negligible anyway as it would only be the amount of the donation that puts you past the SD that you would be considering.